A talk by Peter Singer, Director, Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution. "Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know"

ABSTRACT: A generation ago, “cyberspace” was just a term from science fiction, used to describe the nascent network of computers linking a few university labs. Today, our entire modern way of life, from communication to commerce to conflict, fundamentally depends on the Internet. And the cybersecurity issues that result challenge virtually everyone: politicians wrestling with everything from cybercrime to online freedom; generals protecting the nation from new forms of attack, while planning new cy­berwars; business executives defending firms from once unimaginable threats, and looking to make money off of them; lawyers and ethicists building new frameworks for right and wrong. Most of all, cybersecurity issues affect us as individuals. We face new questions in everything from our rights and responsibilities as citizens of both the online and real world to simply how to protect ourselves and our families from a new type of danger. Yet there is perhaps no issue that has grown so important, so quickly, and that touches so many, that remains so poorly understood.

BIOGRAPHY: Peter W. Singer is the director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at The Brookings Institution. His research focuses on three core issues: the future of war, current U.S. defense needs and future priorities, and the future of the U.S. defense system. A frequent lec­turer to U.S. military audiences, Singer is the author of several books and articles, including Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know and Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.